It is a truth universally acknowledged that the majority of humanities students have no idea what they want to do with their lives, most of whom end up in law school because, as I’ve often heart it put, they couldn’t think of anything better to do. And with the exception of a JD, I am no different. Despite years of soul-searching and self-help worksheets and online career tests, I have never known what I really want to do with my life, at least not career-wise. I have moved from job to job over the last fifteen years of my professional life, with a short year out to take the obligatory grad school detour, and never once have I enjoyed a single one.
Things have continued to be crazy at work. I spend most of my time terrified that someone will find out I don’t know what I’m doing, even though I probably know more than I realize. But it is so difficult to play a game when you don’t know the rules and you have no one to show you. So this goes beyond bored, or dissatisfied. This is the dark ribbon of fear, the cages you make for yourself and the distortions you place on reality. I wish there was some way to blast those phantoms out of existence. But it takes time, and I’m working on it.
In the meantime, I have a backup plan – my new poster arrived today, the one that says “Keep Calm and Carry On.” I’m going to have it framed and put in my office to remind me that there is No Cause for Panic. It is a facsimile of a poster placed all over London during World War II to calm the tube-riding public.
So enough of this maudlin musing. Is anyone else disturbed by the recent Doritos commercial that has been airing recently? The one in which two bags of Doritos fight WWF-style in a ring in front of an army of wiggling knit toys? I mean, what the hell is going on there? Are bags of Doritos and knit toys supposed to have something in common? Are knit toys supposed to have some kind of street cred? What age group is this advert aimed at?
More importantly, what coke-lined booze-fueled junket led to some young ad jocks coming up with this crap?
Some ads are funny. The one about car care products that intones in a sonorous voice: “Here at Blah Blah, we’ve been conducting tests to see how children make such gigantic messes in such a short time” and then shows a child being shut up in a minivan is hilarious. The one from years ago in which the man runs into an open file drawer whilst talking to his boss about how all the information for the meeting is stored in his brain slayed me every time I watched it. If I could have rolled on the floor I would have.
But this Doritoes commercial is WHACK. Whack I tell you.
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